Questions tagged [short-stories]
For about a fictional work too small to be called a [novel] or [novella] - usually less than 10-20 thousand words and no chapters. Use to either identify the media on a [story-identification] question or disambiguate works where the tag covers the short story and its form in other media.. If you are looking for a particular anthology of short stories, use the [anthology-book] tag instead.
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Terminus Est and Le Croix; possible connection between Malzberg and Wolfe
I have come across a short story by Barry Malzberg called Terminus Est, and another called Le Croix. As a fan of Gene Wolfe, these names both are reminiscent of his work, as the weapon of pivotal ...
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Short story in the form of a search history of a man stranded on a planet
I'm pretty sure it was nominated for a Hugo or Nebula. It could have been a short story or a novelette, but definitely not a novella.
It is meant to look like a log of a computer answering someone's ...
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Story where a man has three opportunities to ask a computer a question it cannot answer
What I remember of the story is that a community sends the latest in a series of potential sacrifices, a young man, off to a city where he has three opportunities to ask a computer a question the ...
CommunityBot
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Analog story - US provides food machines to other nations, with hidden feature
This is a near present day story for the time of publication - late 1990s/early 2000s, I think. At Christmas time, the US is sending devices (nanotech, I think) that can create food from non-organic ...
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Scifi short story with a star in a jar
When I was in elementary school, I remember borrowing a science fiction short story collection from the library. It had a number of great stories in it, but I've never been able to find it as an adult....
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Can you help me find this short horror story I heard on Otis Jiry's Scary Stories Told in the Dark podcast?
The story is about a man who digs a hole near a Union camp during the American Civil War. He is planning to try and assassinate a Union general by hiding in it and covering himself with a camouflaged ...
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Beatles reference in parody story from the 1980s
This was a story almost certainly from Asimovs. All I remember is one line about the alien invaders: something like "Their names was Legion, they called themselves Skreegion, but among their ...
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Short story about girl back from a Narnia-like portal trip
A few years back, I found a short story that I'd like to find again. The basic premise was that the main character was a woman who as a girl had stepped into a portal into a fantasy world—much like ...
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Short story about a boy living on a flooded Earth, with aliens that are helping clean up the climate damage in a deal with the government
I'm trying to identify a story that had appeared in a compendium of Sci-Fi short stories.
It was set on Earth, post climate catastrophe, with massive sea level rise. It was about a teenager hopping ...
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Help finding a short story about an eye at the end of the universe
I read this short story some years ago, and I’m unable to find it since.
The story was about some scientists who engineer a sort of telescope that can see to the end of the Universe. They initially ...
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Short story where automated freight ships regularly come to a mining planet to collect the ore
Was rummaging the pages of an SF anthology many years back and have thought about one of its stories but can't remember what it was called or who wrote it. Help! The title is probably the name of a ...
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Looking for a short story with robot judges
I'm researching current developments in AI & Law, including aspects that have been fictionalised. I came across a Reddit thread a few months ago, I think, where someone mentioned a short story (or ...
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A short story about a gadget that proves that that the future is totally determined [duplicate]
I read this short story about ten or so years ago, in a collection.
It is not about Asimov's thiotimoline, but it has some common aspect.
There is a gadget with a light and a button. Whatever you do, ...
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60's/70's story (from Galaxy?) where a man wakes up on top of a tall chimney as a blade rises
The blade runs around the circumference of the very tall chimney's rim, and at some point as it slowly rises the man will have to jump to his death. There's a note explaining to him that he's the ...
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Short story about humanoid creatures living on ice, which can swim under the ice and eat the moss/plants that grow on the underside of the ice
I read this story in 2014. The book was old though. Seemed like before the 2000s. It could be part of a collection of stories, but I remember it being short. It was also in English, in case that’s ...
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A collection of stories about young monsters and vampires
There are a couple of books I have been trying to find for years. I found and read them in my school library when I was in either intermediate or middle school; somewhere around the late 1980's. I'm ...
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Short story - disease that causes deformities and telepathy. Bar joke
This is a story from Asimovs in the 1980s; the backstory is a disease that causes disfiguring growths on the face/head and the ability to read minds. The telepaths are a mistreated minority (I forget ...
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Short story about humans -> machines -> disembodied spirits
I've been scouring the internet trying to find a science fiction piece I remember reading when I was in elementary school.
It was very short and about how humans will evolve into machines leaving our ...
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A story about machines that can build anything so long as proper instructions are provided
The story starts with a person winning a lottery to go to a planet where each person receives a machine that can build anything. At arrival he is surprised everyone is asking him questions about ...
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A story where SETI finds a signal but it's just a boring philosophical treatise
I read a short story where SETI researchers were able to identify and decipher a signal from the region of Cassiopeia, but when the alien language was decoded, it was just a long philosophical ...
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Story of man abandoning annoying wife and son but not daughter during car escape from nuclear attack [duplicate]
Trying to find SF short story about a man who flees a nuclear strike in his car with his wife, son, and daughter. Having been mocked for having prepared for the event, he finds his wife and son ...
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Looking for an author's anthology of short surreal/absurdist fiction (80s-90s)
Summary: Anthology with short story about afterlife being a giant movie theater.
I am looking for a collection of short stories of a particular author. It was published in hardcover, and I picked up ...
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Short story about God losing a war with Satan
I read a short story in the seventies in England. In it, God is losing to Satan. To save himself, God "converts" his "body" into trillions and trillions of microscopic pieces and ...
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Short story where candidates in a competition used an online database to answer a question
This was a short story which included a competition, in which the participants had to use an online database to find the answer to a complex question. It was something like "What was the stock price ...
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Alien consciousness 'finds' human soldier, soldier becomes President
I'm trying to identify a short-story, definitely written before the 1980's.
The story was told in four parts;
1. There was a biography-like introduction which lays out the story; the bizarrely ...
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Short story about travelling alien entering soldiers body as he dies.. John Dix? [duplicate]
A short story about an American soldier (John Dix?) fighting Chinese in America. At the point of his death (blown up and buried) his body is entered by an alien who becomes trapped then reassembles ...
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A short story about a boy who was the son of a "normal" woman and a vaguely human denizen of the deep
I read this Fantasy short story more than 20 years ago, in a collection.
There are two main characters, one is a "normal human" marine biologist. A dozen years or so before the events in the ...
- 113k
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Short story about a boy cloning himself, who then ends up fighting with the clone (open ending/plot twist of the clone being the one that survived?)
I remember reading this at school when I was 12 or 13, so I assume this is a sci-fi story for kids. I also remember that the story is a bit old too.
The story, from what I remember, is about a boy who ...
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Short story about the temptation of Jesus, with a twist
I'm looking for a short story I've read a couple years ago, but forgot where. It starts with the temptation of Jesus as described in the Bible, but then it has a plot twist: the devil shows the future ...
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Parody of Fables About Authenticity
I was just telling one of my sons about a humorous fantasy story that was in one of my middle school textbooks. It was just a couple pages at most, and I think it was written by a famous mid-...
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A horror-SF short story that begins as a "mundane" dialogue between two paranoid conspiracy theorists [duplicate]
I read this short story about 20 years ago, in a collection. But I think it was a rather old collection even then.
At the beginning it looks like a paranoid conspiracy theorist trying to convince a ...
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Kids' short story, an alien kid body-swaps with her Earth pen-pal to get away from bad alien world?
Story is a normal Earth girl is meeting her alien pen pal, who she talks to about everything. When the pen pal arrives, the girl goes with her in her flying (?) car and hears more about the alien ...
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Short story about a boy and a modular steampunk factory
I read a short story online a few years ago, in late 2022, that I can't seem to find again. The closest I seem to get when I search various terms is "Autofac" by Philip K. Dick, but it ...
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Story about a plantation owner [duplicate]
I read a short story about a man who buys a plantation producing a valuable crop which is very tough. Then the plantation comes under attack by a pest (creature) that no one has been able to stop.
He ...
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Sci-fi short story about a dystopian future where all natural resources had been used up and people were struggling to survive [duplicate]
I read this sci-fi short story in an anthology book in the early 90s.
The story was about a dystopian future where all the natural resources had been used up and people were struggling to survive. ...
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Nanotech arms-race short story - nanodevice kills people who have read Drexler
I think I read this short story online (and I think it was quite short) around 2000. The main character has a friend who is enthusiastic about nanotechnology and has a copy of Drexler's Engines of ...
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Short science fiction story about a sentient atomic bomb named Iglatha [duplicate]
The bomb (or more accurately a mine) named Iglatha was left on Earth by an ancient civilization. It was long dormant, but awakened in 1945 following the atomic bomb tests. Further misguided actions ...
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Short story about an injured alien lifeform that fell to an island on modern day Earth and was unable to communicate with humans [duplicate]
It was a short story. I believe it's by Alfred van Vogt.
Some sentient lifeform (maybe it is a huge robot) fell to an ocean on modern day Earth, escaping from war. Its vision is based on radiation, so ...
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Short story involving a dystopian future, suspended animation, and a dumbing of society solution [duplicate]
I read a short story many years ago about a man that was accidentally suspended due to a medical procedure. He is discovered by a scientist digging up metals in what was an old cemetery. The ...
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A short story about a SF author telling his friends, as a joke, a harebrained SF story, and what follows
I read this humorous short story in a SF&F collection, more than 20 years ago. I am positive is it by a very famous SF writer but I forgot whom.
It is a fiction, but in a world that, alas, could ...
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Horror short story about a watchmaker who sits in his shop as various characters come in and out of the store
I listened to a horror short story on YouTube about 6 or 7 years ago, I've been trying to find it for a while. Since I listened to it on YouTube, I cannot tell you if it was by a published author or ...
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Short story about a gameshow in which the contestant pushes a button to kill a stranger
I read a short story in the 80s (I have in mind it was in a kids' compendium of (sci-fi) short stories.)
A person takes part in a gameshow, and if he presses a button, a stranger wearing a jumpsuit on ...
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Short story in which the protagonist shrinks to the size of his model train set and is run over by one of his trains
I read this in the very early 80's. It was in an SF collection which I suspect was from the UK, but I could be mistaken.
It involves a protagonist who obsessively plays with his model railway. One ...
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Short story about a spaceship AI that keeps rebooting itself after rediscovering the truth of its situation
I'm trying to find the title and author of a short story I read some 10 years ago, probably in some short story collection. I don't think it's well known; in any event I haven't managed to find it ...
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A possibly Varley short fiction about a clone, his sister-progenitor and a complicated family history
I read this short story (or perhaps novelette) at least 40 years ago, in a collection.
I realise now that the story might well be by John Varley. But I'm pretty sure it was not a pure Varley ...
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Short story about a dentist trapped in the past
It was a short story written in 50s-60s, all I remember is something like this:
A dentist goes to the past, as a result of an experiment. He was supposed to be able to go back in his time, but ...
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A short story about a writer compelled to write lest he drown in ink
I read this short story more than 30 years ago, in a collection of Fantasy and SF. It is not SF so it must be fantasy.
It is about a writer who used to be prolific but now has failed to give his ...
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A short fiction where a well-preserved corpse of a tens of thousands years old homo sapiens sapiens is used to make a clone, and more
I read this SF novelette (I think, or maybe longish short story ?) about 20 years ago, in a collection that might have been older.
it is rather complex. The very well preserved corpse of a homo ...
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Member of a secret cabal builds a casino to secretly destabilize a city
I'm not sure if I read this in a magazine or anthology; I think I read it around 2010, but it could have been from much earlier.
The viewpoint character is a member of a secret organization, but I don'...
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Short story or novella where a man's wife dies and is brought back to life. The process is called rekindling. Rekindled people are very different
This was a short story or novella I read back in the mid 80's probably. It was published in one of the Analog-type periodicals, but I don't remember which one.
The main thing I recall is that a man's ...
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